How to Kill Men and Get Away With It(35)

He’s now looking over at me with a mix of confusion and fear as we pull away from the pub and begin our journey back to SW3.

‘It’s not nice, is it? Feeling helpless and like your own body is out of your control. Do you think that’s how your victims felt? You know, the women you raped?’

Daniel pales to the colour of weak tea and sweat starts to run down his face, pooling in a rancid little puddle in his clavicle. He may be off his tits on GHB, but he knows the game is up.

‘I didn’t rape them,’ he wheezes. ‘They wanted it.’

My blood feels like it’s burning my skin.

‘Liar!’ I slam on the brakes, hard, letting the motion of being flung forward at force but held in place by his seatbelt wind him.

‘Just admit what you did. Apologise. And this doesn’t have to be painful. You might even get a few thousand years in purgatory instead of going straight to hell.’

He tries to lift his head enough to look at me, the film of sweat over his face like a caul. ‘I. Didn’t. Do. Nothing. Wrong.’

I suppose an accidental double negative is about as close as I’m likely to get to a confession from him.

I look at him. Pathetic. Shrivelled up and sweating like a, well, like a fucking rapist. I suddenly can’t wait to get him home, to watch that fear in his eyes grow into complete and utter terror when he realises what’s about to happen.

But when I glance at him again, while I’m stopped at some roadworks where no one appears to be working but the temporary lights have been left on anyway, I can see that something is very wrong. The look of fear has disappeared. In fact all looks have gone. His eyes are glassy and staring. But they’re staring at nothing. Because he’s dead as fuck.

Shit.

Maybe giving him all the GHB was a bad idea. I didn’t think it could kill someone though. Jesus Christ. I’m going to have to do some research on date-rape drugs. Maybe he was allergic to it? I don’t know. I’m not a fucking paramedic. All I know is that he’s dead. In the passenger seat. Next to me.

Fuck.





27


KITTY’S RANGE ROVER, SOMEWHERE BETWEEN CATFORD AND CHELSEA

Okay. Don’t panic.

The problem here is that while I’m used to getting dead bodies out of my apartment, I’ve never actually had to get one in before. And it definitely isn’t something I’d choose to do in broad fucking daylight.

I pull over into a smaller road as soon as I see more prams and trees than drunks and tramps. I need to think.

So, I could take him home and leave him in the car until it’s dark. But I’d have to somehow cover him up and with the heat it’s not going to be long before he starts stinking like the rotten bit of meat he is. I could take him straight to one of the abattoirs, but the workers would be there. Plus the nearest one, in Hampshire, is still a forty-five-minute drive away. That’s quite a long time with a corpse next to you. Also, I need my tools. My only real option is to try to get him past whichever concierge is working and up to my penthouse.

I glance into the backseat and thank God (or whatever) that I’m a nightmare when it comes to cleaning out my car. The entire back is basically my emergency wardrobe. You never know if disaster of disasters could strike at an event and you turn up in exactly the same Ghost dress as someone else. Even though your stylist promised you it was one of a kind. Anyway, the point is I have hats, cloaks, coats aplenty. And I’m going to have to get creative. I head back to Chelsea, park the Evoque in the underground car park and get to work.

I park an oversized Miu Miu bucket hat on Daniel’s head (thank you, Nineties revival) and wind a Madeleine Thompson wrap around his torso. Then I remember the random roller-skates in the boot back when I was stuffing Joel’s suitcase in there. They’ll help.

Not only does Daniel Rose look stylish(ish), he’s also now much easier to manoeuvre.

Luckily for me – I really must’ve been born under a lucky star – Rehan’s working. He’s not at the desk, but several feet away in the delivery room. He gives me a big smile and wave as I slide Daniel Rose through the foyer. With some difficulty, admittedly. Even on wheels, he’s not light.

‘Hello, Miss Kitty!’

‘Hi, Rehan, how are you?’

‘Very well, miss. Your friend,’ he indicates the corpse I’m trying to smuggle in, ‘she is not so well?’

‘Very sick,’ I say. ’She’s had one too many, again! Taking her upstairs to sleep it off.’

‘She is a very naughty girl.’ Rehan nods in recognition. ‘And she will fall down dead on skates!’ He laughs and I fake laugh while pretending to whisper sobering words of advice to the dead body I’m dragging into the lift.

Once we arrive at my floor it’s pretty much plain sailing and Rehan doesn’t even notice when I leave the next morning with bits of Daniel Rose packaged neatly in shopping bags. Gucci, Tiffany, Chanel.

‘Just off to do some returning.’ I smile, handing him a coffee I’d made along with a blueberry muffin. ‘Say hi to your girls from me.’

I also slip him a smaller Tiffany bag, which contains two white gold bracelets with tiny diamonds that twinkle like fairy lights in the sun. Rehan’s daughters are back in Pakistan with his sister. His wife died in childbirth with his youngest, he told me as I gave him a coffee on one of his first days in the job – around three years ago now. He sends almost all the money he earns here back home to them, to put them through school. He’s kind and I like to give him gifts for his girls whenever I can.